Billionaires are boosting charter schools across America - CBS News

Billionaires are boosting charter schools across America - CBS News

Billionaires are boosting charter schools across America

SEATTLE - Dollar for dollar, the beleaguered movement to bring charter schools to Washington state has had no bigger champion than billionaire Bill Gates.

The Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder gave millions of dollars to see a charter school law approved despite multiple failed ballot referendums. And his private foundation not only helped create the Washington State Charter Schools Association but has at times contributed what amounts to an entire year's worth of revenues for the 5-year-old charter advocacy group.

All told, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given about $25 million to the charter group that is credited with keeping the charter schools open after the state struck down the law and then lobbying legislators to revive the privately run, publicly funded schools.

It's an extreme example of how billionaires are influencing state education policy by giving money to state-level charter support organizations to sustain, defend and expand the charter schools movement across the country.

Since 2006, philanthropists and their private foundations and charities have given almost half a billion dollars to those groups, according to an Associated Press analysis of tax filings and Foundation Center data. The review looked at 52 groups noted by a U.S. Department of Education website as official charter school resources in the 44 states plus Washington, D.C., that currently have a charter law, as well as the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Most of the money has gone to the top 15 groups, which received $425 million from philanthropy. The Walton Family Foundation, run by the heirs to the Walmart (WMT) fortune, is the largest donor to the state charter advocates, giving $144 million to 27 groups.

"We ought to be paying more attention to who these organizations are, and what kind of vision they have, and what drives them. A lot of these organizations have extraordinary influence, and it's often pretty quiet influence," said Jon Valant, an education policy expert at Brookings.

Charters aren't subject to the same rules or standards governing traditional public schools, but they're embraced by Gates and other philanthropists who see them as investments in developing better and different ways to educate those who struggle in traditional school systems, particularly children in poor, urban areas. Studies on academic success are mixed.

The charter support groups, as nonprofits, are typically forbidden from involvement in political campaigns, but the same wealthy donors who sustain them in many cases directly channel support to pro-charter candidates through related political action committees or their own contributions.

In one indication of the philanthropy's success in asserting its priorities, Georgia's lieutenant governor was recorded saying he was motivated to support school choice laws to curry the Walton foundation's favor for his gubernatorial campaign. The Walton family has denied any connection to the candidate.

Nationwide, about 5 percent of students attend charters. They have become a polarizing political issue amid criticism from some, notably teachers unions, that they drain resources from cash-starved schools and erode the neighborhood schooling model that defines communities.

The Walton foundation notes the groups it funds have resources that often pale in comparison to the war chests of teachers unions, the usual foes in their battles over state education policy.

"The philanthropic support is essential for a small group of schools" that represents disadvantage families without their own political power, said Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a University of Washington-affiliated think tank that has in the past been funded by the Gates Foundation to do work supporting charter schools.

But John Rogers, an education policy expert and UCLA professor, said it's a problem for democracy that billionaires who back a certain model of education reform can go toe-to-toe with a critical mass of professional teachers.

"A handful of billionaires who are advancing their vision of education reform is very different than having 200,000-some odd teachers across the state representing their understanding of public education through their union representation," Rogers said.

In California, the Waltons are the biggest backers of the powerhouse California Continue reading: Billionaires are boosting charter schools across America - CBS News

Big Education Ape: U.S. Treasury Restricts Donor Disclosure Requirement for Some Nonprofit Groups - WSJ - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2018/07/us-treasury-restricts-donor-disclosure.html

Right-Wing Money Is Greasing the Anti-Teachers Union Skids | The Range: The Tucson Weekly's Daily Dispatch

Right-Wing Money Is Greasing the Anti-Teachers Union Skids | The Range: The Tucson Weekly's Daily Dispatch

Right-Wing Money Is Greasing the Anti-Teachers Union Skids

Teachers, here's a pop quiz. How will you receive information trying to convince you to drop ties with the teachers union? (a) Email. (b) Snail mail. (c) Phone call. (d) Knock on your door. The correct answer is (e) Any or all of the above.

The Public School Wrecking Crew scored a huge win when the Supreme Court decided public-employee unions cannot make nonmembers contribute to collective bargaining in its recent Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees decision. The ink was barely dry on the written arguments when right wing money began pouring into campaigns to persuade teachers to walk away from their unions.

Right-leaning think tanks and advocacy organizations have placed anti-union ads on Google and social media and sent targeted emails to teachers across the country. Some plan to go door to door to reach educators during the summer.

One group is trying to uses states' open records laws to get the email addresses of union members to make targeting even easier.

Two groups spearheading the campaign are The Mackinac Center and The Freedom Foundation. Both have strong libertarian, "free market" leanings. That puts them in the same ideological camp, and funding stream, as UA's "Freedom Center," which created the high school course, Philosophy 101: Ethics, Economy, and Entrepreneurship, currently on hold in TUSD, though it's still being taught in other local school districts as well as charter and private schools. (To give you the complete buzz word, dog whistle experience, the center's full name is the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom. It is housed in the recently created Department of Political Economy & Moral Science.)

Let's look at the two groups funding the anti-union push.

First, the Mackinac Center. Based in Michigan, it's one of the largest state-level "think tanks" in the country. It receives direct and indirect funding from the Koch brothers, making it a sucker on the Kochtopus, the gigantic, many-tentacled denizen of the Dark Money deep. It has also received Continue reading: Right-Wing Money Is Greasing the Anti-Teachers Union Skids | The Range: The Tucson Weekly's Daily Dispatch

Safety over privacy? RealNetworks to offer free facial recognition technology to K-12 schools – GeekWire

Safety over privacy? RealNetworks to offer free facial recognition technology to K-12 schools – GeekWire

Safety over privacy? RealNetworks to offer free facial recognition technology to K-12 schools

RealNetworks, the Seattle company best known for pioneering streaming media in the early days of the web, is deploying a surprising new product today. The company says it will offer a new facial recognition technology, called SAFR, for free to K-12 schools to help upgrade their on-site security systems.

SAFR can be used with the same cameras that traditional surveillance systems to recognize students, staff, and people visiting schools. RealNetworks says that in addition to security, the tool can also help with record-keeping and “campus monitoring.” The technology is compatible with Mac, iOS, Android and Windows.

RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser in 2017. (GeekWire Photo / Nat Levy)

“SAFR from RealNetworks is highly accurate facial recognition software powered by artificial intelligence,” the company explains on the SAFR site. “It works with existing IP cameras and readily available hardware to match faces in real-time. Schools can stay focused and better analyze potential threats such as expelled students, and those who pose a threat from within and outside the school.”

The offer follows a series of fatal shootings at U.S. schools, but also comes amid a groundswell of concern about the ethical and privacy implications of AI-powered facial recognition technology.

RealNetworks says the system includes privacy protections and doesn’t seek to identify people by race.

To use SAFR, schools will keep a database with photographs of people authorized to be on campus. If the system doesn’t recognize a face, it notifies a member of the staff. The facial data and images SAFR collects are encrypted as a privacy protection and remain in the school’s possession. The technology is designed to work even in rural schools with limited internet connectivity.

Schools in the U.S. and Canada can download and use SAFR for free starting Wednesday. One Seattle elementary school has already implemented SAFR as part of a pilot program: University Child Development School is using the technology to identify authorized staff and parents and automatically grant them entry.

RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser is the reason that particular elementary school came to pilot the software. His three children are students. When RealNetworks began developing facial recognition technology, Glaser asked the school about its security measures at the front gate. He found out that they used a security camera monitored by a person and asked if the school would like to test out software to do the job automatically.

The school agreed, and the pilot went smoothly, Glaser said in an interview with GeekWire.

“A lot of the trials were very successful but this one was particularly remarkable for two reasons,” Glaser said. “One, the community loved it and embraced it and it was everything we would’ve wanted in terms of a happy customer, a vibrant community embracing it. That all felt right. Then after about two or three months into the trial, the horrible tragedy of Parkland happened … and the whole question of school  Continue reading: Safety over privacy? RealNetworks to offer free facial recognition technology to K-12 schools – GeekWire

Big Education Ape: Chinese school's facial recognition scans students every 30 seconds - Business Insider - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2018/07/chinese-schools-facial-recognition.html

Parent Coalition for Student Privacy -https://www.studentprivacymatters.org/

Learn how to protect your child's sensitive data.

Download a copy of the toolkit in English or Spanish
Parent Coalition for Student Privacy - https://www.studentprivacymatters.org/

U.S. Treasury Restricts Donor Disclosure Requirement for Some Nonprofit Groups - WSJ

U.S. Treasury Restricts Donor Disclosure Requirement for Some Nonprofit Groups - WSJ

U.S. Treasury Restricts Donor Disclosure Requirement for Some Nonprofit Groups
Social welfare groups, trade associations won’t have to list donors, department says

WASHINGTON—The Treasury Department will allow some nonprofit groups to provide less information about donors on their tax forms in a win for conservative organizations engaged in politics.

Until now, nonprofit groups, including charities and trade associations, had to list contributors who give at least $5,000 on what is known as Schedule B. The IRS received the complete version, and the groups publicly released redacted forms without identifying information about donors.

Under the change announced late Monday, charities and political groups still must provide the names and addresses of donors, but other nonprofits don’t. Organizations that no longer need to provide the information include social welfare organizations, which can engage in politics and don’t have to disclose their donors to the Federal Election Commission. Social welfare groups have been active across the political spectrum, but conservative ones have been particularly involved in politics.

Some of the largest groups affected include an arm of the National Rifle Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Americans for Prosperity, a group tied to billionaires Charles and David Koch.

“Americans shouldn’t be required to send the IRS information that it doesn’t need to effectively enforce our tax laws, and the IRS simply does not need tax returns with donor names and addresses to do its job in this area,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. “This change will in no way limit transparency. The same information about tax-exempt organizations that was previously available to the public will continue to be available, while private taxpayer information will be better protected.”

According to the Trump administration, the IRS didn’t make systematic use of the information. But the previously available redacted forms did often reveal useful information, such as whether a particular group is supported by just one or two major donors. Under Monday’s change, that information would presumably still be available publicly. It appears that the rules would require the new version submitted to IRS to match the redacted version released under the old rules.

For the past few years, Republicans have been examining the Schedule B requirements, questioning how useful the information is to the IRS and arguing that donors could face harassment if the information is inadvertently released.

In 2016, the House passed a bill to eliminate the requirement, but the Obama administration opposed it and it didn’t become law. The IRS has previously considered scaling back the requirement but hadn’t done so until Monday. The donor-disclosure rules for charities and political groups are contained in statutes and can’t be changed by the administration.

“The IRS’s decision is a move in the right direction to end activist regulators’ culture of intimidation to silence political speech,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) “More and more states were using these documents to chill political discourse, rather than encourage it.”

Democrats blasted the decision and warned that the IRS would have one less tool to figure out whether groups are complying with the law. Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) said he will vote against President Donald Trump’s pick to run the IRS unless he promises to reverse the move.

“President Trump’s late-night giveaway to shady donors and interest groups makes dark Continue reading: U.S. Treasury Restricts Donor Disclosure Requirement for Some Nonprofit Groups - WSJ

He has quite the résumé — just not for the powerful schools job he has won - The Washington Post

He has quite the résumé — just not for the powerful schools job he has won - The Washington Post

He has quite the résumé — just not for the powerful schools job he has won

He’s got quite the résumé.

Austin Beutner, the new superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, has been, among other things:

— Clinton administration appointee assigned with helping Russia transform from a centralized to free-market economy
— Successful investment banker
— First deputy mayor of Los Angeles, overseeing 12 city agencies
— Publisher and chief executive officer of the Los Angeles Times and San Diego Union-Tribune
— Major philanthropist

Now he is chief of the second-largest school district in the country. Experience in the classroom? Zilch.  Operational experience in education systems? Nada.

The L.A. school board made its choice — in relative secrecy and without what some critics said was sufficient vetting — believing that educational experience isn’t required to fix problems that have festered for decades and that seem intractable. Educators have been in charge in the past, after all, and they didn’t fix the problems, so why not try a new approach?

Well, that would be a reasonable question if it hadn’t been tried before and failed. Numerous districts — either schools boards or mayors with power to make the decision — have tapped business executives, or retired generals, or, in New York’s case, a former federal prosecutor (Joel Klein) to run schools. (Can you think of another profession in which a leader would be selected with no internal experience, except, possibly, politics?) If you don’t remember ever hearing of a brilliant turnaround of a district, that’s because there wasn’t one.

Why? Because no matter who has been in charge, the keys of education restructuring — standardized test-based accountability and school choice — aren’t designed to fundamentally address the drastic problems facing many school systems. Testing is based on a notion that it’s an effective evaluation tool for high-stakes decisions — but assessment experts say it isn’t. School choice — in the form of charter schools and voucherlike programs — has not proved to be a systematic solution.

Charter schools — publicly funded but privately operated, often by private companies — are a good example of the problems school choice has created in the state. California has more than 1,200 charter schools enrolling some 630,000 students — about 10 percent of students in the state — and L.A. Unified has the most.

Charters have been a controversial topic in Los Angeles ever since a plan by housing and insurance Continue reading: He has quite the résumé — just not for the powerful schools job he has won - The Washington Post

How the Gates Foundation could have saved itself and taxpayers more than half a billion dollars - The Washington Post - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/07/17/how-the-gates-foundation-could-have-saved-itself-and-taxpayers-more-than-half-a-billion-dollars/?utm_term=.faf052ee6447

Chinese school's facial recognition scans students every 30 seconds - Business Insider

Chinese school's facial recognition scans students every 30 seconds - Business Insider

A school in China is monitoring students with facial-recognition technology that scans the classroom every 30 seconds

Visitors viewing a display of electronic facial-recognition technology that claims to be able to detect when students are talking or looking at their cellphones at the 21st China Beijing International High-tech Expo in Beijing. AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

• A Chinese high school in Hangzhou is using facial-recognition technology that scans students every 30 seconds.
• The system is analyzing students' emotions and actions in the classroom as well as replacing ID cards and wallets at the library and canteen.
• Facial-recognition technology is widespread in China, where it is being used to predict crime.
• But using the systems in schools has raised privacy concerns, and last year hundreds of channels livestreaming classroom surveillance footage online was shut down.

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A Chinese high school is using facial-recognition technology to monitor and analyze students' behavior.

The technology scans classrooms at Hangzhou No. 11 High School every 30 seconds and records students' facial expressions, categorizing them into happy, angry, fearful, confused, or upset. The system also records student actions such as writing, reading, raising a hand, and sleeping at a desk.

The "intelligent classroom behavior management system," according to Global Times, also records students' attendance, and students' faces are used to pay for canteen lunches and to borrow items from the library.

The school's vice principal said students' privacy was protected because the technology didn't save images from the classroom and stored data on a local server rather than on the cloud.

Last year the Chinese company Qihoo 360 shut down hundreds of its surveillance livestreaming channels after an uptick in privacy concerns. The channels streamed camera footage from several public locations including swimming pools, restaurants, and classrooms — the latter protected only by a password.

But security systems are rising in popularity after an increase in violence and questionable practices at Chinese kindergartens. In Beijing, all kindergartens are now required to have surveillance systems, some of which are even connected to local policemonitoring systems. Continue reading: Chinese school's facial recognition scans students every 30 seconds - Business Insider

Parent Coalition for Student Privacy - https://www.studentprivacymatters.org/

Learn how to protect your child's sensitive data.

Download a copy of the toolkit in Englishor Spanish
Parent Coalition for Student Privacy - https://www.studentprivacymatters.org/

Education Underfunding Tops $19 Billion over Decade of Neglect | #AFT2018 #RedForEd #IamAFT @aft @AFSCME @NEAToday @SEIU

Education Underfunding Tops $19 Billion over Decade of Neglect | American Federation of Teachers

Education Underfunding Tops $19 Billion over Decade of Neglect

PITTSBURGH—Governments in 25 states have shortchanged public K-12 education by $19 billion over the last decade, with low-tax Republican states guilty of the worst underfunding, a groundbreaking report by the American Federation of Teachers, released today, reveals.

“A Decade of Neglect: Public Education Funding in the Aftermath of the Great Recession” details for the first time the devastating impact on schools, classrooms and students when states choose to pursue an austerity agenda in the false belief that tax cuts will pay for themselves.

The comprehensive report offers a deep dive into the long-term austerity agendas and historic disinvestment that sparked the wave of nationwide walkouts this spring.

Among the findings: K-12 education is drastically underfunded in every single state in the United States. When you control for inflation, there are 25 states that spent less on K-12 education in 2016 than they did prior to the recession. But there are signs of the negative impact of austerity even in states with relatively stronger investment in schools.

Chronic underfunding explains why, in 38 states, the average teacher salary is lower in 2018 than it was in 2009, and why the pupil-teacher ratio was worse in 35 states in 2016 than in 2008.

While the recession may have forced budget cuts on our schools, the report exposes how Republican legislators and governors prolonged the damage by cutting taxes for the rich at the expense of public schools.

A majority of Americans instead support repealing tax cuts for the rich and using that money to invest in education, infrastructure and healthcare.

The report measures each state’s “tax effort”—that is, how much they tax, compared with how rich they are. Of the 25 states with the worst K-12 funding, 18 of them have taxed their residents less since the recession. Five of the 11 states with the lowest K-12 funding—Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas—are also among those with the lowest taxes on the rich.

The problem only gets worse in higher education, where 41 states spent less per student, creating a massive affordability and accessibility gap. This explains why tuition and fees for a two-year degree in 2017 rose at three times the rate of inflation when compared with 2008, and why the cost of a four-year degree rose even higher, putting college woefully out of reach for far too many Americans.

“These problems belong squarely at the feet of elected officials, many of them Republicans, who rather than investing in our future, insisted on ushering in counterproductive austerity,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten. “When legislators choose to prioritize millionaires over children, our country suffers. And when our education secretary says that money doesn’t matter in schools, we tell teachers, parents and children that they don’t matter either.”

The report was accompanied by a key resolution, passed by delegates today at the AFT’s biennial convention, to turn the data into action. “The Fight for Investment in Our Future and the Fight Against Austerity” states, in part, that the AFT “will … investigate legislative, policy and grass-roots solutions to increase investment in public services, including the identification of new revenue streams,” and “will work to channel the activism we are witnessing across the country in this moment into a movement for enduring change by electing pro-public education, pro-worker candidates in November.”

Read the full report here.

# # # #

The AFT represents 1.7 million pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; paraprofessionals and other school-related personnel; higher education faculty and professional staff; federal, state and local government employees; nurses and healthcare workers; and early childhood educators.

Education Underfunding Tops $19 Billion over Decade of Neglect | American Federation of Teachers

'We're militant again': US teachers at convention galvanized by wave of strikes | US news | The Guardian

'We're militant again': US teachers at convention galvanized by wave of strikes | US news | The Guardian

'We're militant again': US teachers at convention galvanized by wave of strikes
Thousands of teachers gathered in Pittsburgh to discuss plan of action for new school year after strikes over pay and conditions

View All AFT Convention 2018 Videos HERE

Thousands of teachers gathered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, this weekend for the American Federation of Teachers’ convention and to discuss a plan of action for the new school year after a series of extraordinary strikes across the US over pay and conditions.

The convention comes as the teachers’ union movement has been galvanized by a wave of strikes, mainly in traditionally Republican states. At the same time, public sector unions are facing a brand new assault on their finances after the supreme court ruled in June that public sector employees in unionized workplaces can opt out of paying union dues. 

Addressing the meeting on Friday, former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said: “We have to gear up again, because the challenges we face now are truly unlike any we have seen for some time.”

However, teachers gathered in Pittsburgh say that instead of being deterred by the attacks on them that the attacks have forced their union’s member to re-engage more in order to keep members from leaving their unions.

“Whose schools? Our schools,” cried out Chicago Teachers Union vice-president Jesse Sharkey as thousands of teachers poured out of the David L Lawrence convention center and into the blistering heat of Pittsburgh’s streets.

“We are all militant again, we will all go to jail if we have to,” said Robert Russo, a teacher union leader from New Jersey who served 15 days in jail in 1970 for his role in an illegal teachers strike. “They are taking away rights, they are taking away everything we have worked for years and people are very invigorated.”

Despite school being out for the summer, teachers around the country aren’t taking a break. They are mobilizing support for more teachers strikes in states across the country including in Louisiana, where a survey of 3,800 teachers in May performed by the union showed that 61% of teachers supported a strike. Continue Reading: 'We're militant again': US teachers at convention galvanized by wave of strikes | US news | The Guardian

View All AFT Convention 2018 Videos HERE

AP Analysis: Billionaires fuel powerful state charter groups

AP Analysis: Billionaires fuel powerful state charter groups

AP Analysis: Billionaires fuel powerful state charter groups

SEATTLE (AP) — Dollar for dollar, the beleaguered movement to bring charter schools to Washington state has had no bigger champion than billionaire Bill Gates.

The Microsoft co-founder gave millions of dollars to see a charter school law approved despite multiple failed ballot referendums. And his private foundation not only helped create the Washington State Charter Schools Association, but has at times contributed what amounts to an entire year’s worth of revenues for the 5-year-old charter advocacy group.

All told, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given about $25 million to the charter group that is credited with keeping the charter schools open after the state struck down the law, and then lobbying legislators to revive the privately run, publicly funded schools.

It’s an extreme example of how billionaires are influencing state education policy by giving money to state-level charter support organizations to sustain, defend and expand the charter schools movement across the country.

Since 2006, philanthropists and their private foundations and charities have given almost half a billion dollars to those groups, according to an Associated Press analysis of tax filings and Foundation Center data. The review looked at 52 groups noted by a U.S. Department of Education website as official charter school resources in the 44 states plus Washington, D.C., that currently have a charter law, as well as the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Most of the money has gone to the top 15 groups, which received $425 million from philanthropy. The Walton Family Foundation, run by the heirs to the Walmart fortune, is the largest donor to the state charter advocates, giving $144 million to 27 groups.

“We ought to be paying more attention to who these organizations are, and what kind of vision they have, and what drives them. A lot of these organizations have extraordinary influence, and it’s often pretty quiet influence,” said Jon Valant, an education policy expert at Brookings.

Charters aren’t subject to the same rules or standards governing traditional public schools but are embraced by Gates and other philanthropists who see them as investments in developing better and different ways to educate those who struggle in traditional school systems, particularly children in poor, urban areas. Studies on academic success are mixed.

The charter support groups, as nonprofits, are typically forbidden from involvement in political campaigns, but the same  Continue reading: AP Analysis: Billionaires fuel powerful state charter groups